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Messages - ThePixelMonster
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11
Job offers / Re: [PAID] Pixel Artist Needed for Physical Product
« on: January 21, 2017, 02:38:38 pm »
I'm just about to write you an email, just got finished with another client. I look forward to hearing back from you.

12
Job offers / Re: 16-Bit Graphic Design
« on: January 14, 2017, 05:29:50 pm »
Hello RetroSoft,

I've just replied to another listing on here but I'll reach out to you in an email as I'd like to inquire as to what you're in need of in terms of how much work and what kind of budget. I'm a huge fan of the retro inspired sprites and I think that we could probably make something work.

Here's a retro inspired mockup of a game concept, clearly inspired by Metroid:
http://i.imgur.com/ISSGveh.png

Something from a while back (top-down arpg):
--- Link Removed ---

It's not my best work, but should give a general idea of my capability as an artist. I have other more 16-bit related works and a heavily mario inspired creation that was created for fun as a hobby project as a parody but imgur is giving me errors right now (over capacity or something) hopefully you can view the above posted links, if not get in touch.

13
Job offers / Re: [PAID Upfront] 2D Artist/Animator
« on: January 14, 2017, 05:10:12 pm »
Hi Thundara.

I'm interested and would like to talk to you about the requirements a little. I have Skype and I am perfectly capable of talking with voice, I also have Mumble and Teamspeak installed so whichever is your preference will be fine. (I don't have or use Discord though)

I'm a capable pixel artist but I'll be honest in saying that I generally prefer to work with slightly lower resolutions than the two images that you've linked to, or at least when I know that I'm going to be creating a number of animations for the sprite, just to keep things within a reasonable time frame and such, but that's something that I'd like to talk to you about, what is your desired or target sprite resolution for your character(s)?

Here's a quick sample that I have on hand of something that is closer to the Castlevania sample that you've linked a video of, I made this not too long ago for a small game jam entry with a steampunk theme:
http://imgur.com/02DbAY7

I am capable of higher resolution sprites and this is an unfinished sample but let me know if you'd like to get in touch and talk about this a little and we can see if we can figure out if we'd like to move forward or not. No matter the outcome, I hope you find a good artist for your project!


14
Pixel Art / Re: Help at getting better.
« on: October 20, 2016, 02:30:21 pm »
I think what the bomb animation needs, apart from the explosion being bigger, is anticipation, you know? So like it needs to get smaller before it expands into the explosion.
Exactly what I said in my reply, with that it would look much better!

15
Pixel Art / Re: Help at getting better.
« on: October 07, 2016, 09:08:12 pm »
Honestly, your sprites aren't that bad to begin with.

The best advice that I can give is to literally just keep at it. The more you make, the better you get. That's all there is to it, of course if you really want to improve you have to learn from what you create but ultimately it all comes down to just "doing more" and improving personally.

I can say that your bomb animation is nice, but lacks a little... The smoke particles are quite nice but the explosion is what's lacking.

Definitely better work than the average person that's trying to get to grips with pixel art so keep at it and you'll get better with time.

The way that I forced improvement was to force myself every day to make some sprites and tiles, I sectioned off at least 1hr a day to make sprites and I would run a generator to pick what resolution of sprite from all kinds of low res to more default 32x32 resolutions of sprites and I would do the same for colour palettes, I would set them to randomly pic based on old systems and about 6months into things I started adding custom palettes to play with in that selection process, whatever came out I used and I also often had a friend or colleague at the time to randomly pick a 'thing' either an animal, type of character, topic ect and just cracked on with it. I personally prefer limiting myself as much as possible, when you find yourself working with as little as 16x16 and 16-32 colours in your palette you find that it's not nearly as easy as some people think but once you come out of that restriction and you start working with 32x32 you find yourself doing more with less pixels and that allows you to do more with the available canvas. The same goes with the colours and limitations of them, but that's just my process. Everyone works differently.

Just keep creating sprites and you'll get better, post your stuff online wherever you can, back when I did that it was a personal thing and I didn't have a facebook or twitter account, so I didn't do that step, but putting your stuff out thee will help others see your progress, provide some tips and generally share your work.

Based on what you have here the above is the best advice that I feel I can give, you seem to be doing a good job already, with regards to your animated bomb effect, look into adding a little more character to the animation by including some form of anticipation for when the fuse goes down all the way, utilizing a little squash and stretch may work well there, if when the fuse goes down you stretch up, squash down and then it goes boom (or even the other way around), you may get a nicer visual out of the whole animation.

Keep up the great work, your sprites aren't bad!

16
Job offers / Re: [Paid] VOXEL Character artist needed
« on: October 07, 2016, 05:48:32 pm »
This is interesting, I'll be in touch shortly regarding this. I'm both a Pixel Artist and a 3D Artist, and I have briefly worked with creating voxel characters for two clients in the past 6 months, I need to see if they are willing to allow me to share the work with you before I get in touch, so give me an hour or so before expecting a response from me.

17
Pixel Art / Re: 32x32 Character Help?
« on: October 07, 2016, 05:40:40 pm »
It looks considerably better than before. Nice work. Just note that you should consider your light source as much as possible, sometimes the lighting in a sprite won't perfectly align with where the intended light source is coming from but usually that is when the odd placement is building on the actual design of the sprite.

As for the shadows, I always place them for presentation purposes when presenting a top-down perspective sprite, so that people can understand right away that they're looking at something in a top-down view, sometimes it's a little harder to just tell from the get go, I would rarely include the shadow in a sprite unless it was a technical requirement from a client or programmer.

Glad to have helped, the progress is nice! Keep up the good work.

18
Job offers / Re: [PAID][CLOSED] Pixel Art for 2D Game
« on: October 07, 2016, 05:36:14 pm »
I see, well yes it was over on Pixeljoint that I was first in touch with you guys. I hope things work out, you should definitely try and fix communication especially within your team as it looks like there may have been multiple people handling things at that time and people slipping through the cracks due to the bad communication, you can burn some bridges that way. Other than that, I hope you manage to get the sprites that you need.

19
Pixel Art / Re: 32x32 Character Help?
« on: October 07, 2016, 04:04:42 am »
Hello,
I'm doing some forays into pixel art and I wanted to make a human character for an RPG. I wanted the character to be 32x32, and no more than 15 colors + transparency.

Here's what I have so far:


First of all, I'd like some critiques and pointers on this guy. I feel like there's a few things off, like for example his feet feel vaguely wrong to me but I'm not sure why (if someone's got some insight, I'd love to hear it!).

Also, does anybody have tips for drawing humans at this scale? I've done non-pixel illustration, but at this scale it feels like things are so much harder, and I want to animate this guy but with how hard it's already been just to draw him standing I'm almost dreading the thought of anything more than the simplest walk cycle.

Like what Not4MortalEyes has said, the arms are a little too short (which I see you tried to fix already) but there are a few more things that I'd like to point out.

When working with anything south of 64x64 (and often even at that scale) you will want to use higher contracting colours wherever possible. Mostly because otherwise you won't be able to see the difference of colours once zoomed out, that's why you often see people working with multiple "preview" windows when they make pixel art. So that you can get an idea of how it might look when in actual use, as it's often (especially when starting out) hard to devise how it can look when you're zoomed in real close. Often one pixel is really out of place when zoomed in and working on a sprite, but when you zoom out that one pixel works like magic to create the illusion of some intricate detail that would otherwise be impossible to convey.

The colours that you've chosen to use aren't bad but they blend together a little too much, if you break apart the colours of the pieces of your character a little more, it will be easier to define where one part starts and another ends, your palette so far is a little too saturated and close to one another. Don't worry, that's the hardest part to get a hang of honestly.

Personally when I create top down sprites, I tend to enjoy them a little closer to the top down perspective than most people, I prefer it to look like a top down sprite, where others prefer it to look like the classic zelda style of top down, where it almost looks like a platformer sprite with a slight angle on it. Anyway...

Here is a small example of what I was talking about above:
100% zoom


300% zoom


You can see, I simply copied your sprite, altered the colours a little, and already you can break the image apart, sorry it's not that complete, I quickly rushed this example for you. Also I have in the image an older sprite of mine to show a few other things.

You mentioned your feet look off, that's probably because you've merged them together, with the amount of pixels you can't really define one single darker line down the center between the two, because the pixels are odd and not even between both of the feet in the sprite, so it makes it harder to separate them from one another, which to me doesn't help the weird look of them. You can see on the slightly altered version that I've created, that I ran a two pixel wide darker line between them because of that, it looks better but too thick if you ask me.

Note that there are also some problems with my older sprite that I've included on the far right, but you can see what I mean about the perspective a little. Also see how the colours are broken up a little, way back when I animated this sprite I ran into a few issues which you will definitely come into contact with, with your current sprite. The hands and the feet overlapped often and where they are both a shade of brown, it made it harder to animate, simply using a darker line for the shade when these overlapped worked well but made it harder to animate by hand making it take more time more than anything, but I simple make them a dark shade of grey on another character and it went much faster. You don't have to alter the entire colour of any particular section like that, but when you're limited to a handful of colours then it may be best to at times. Especially when starting out as it tends to make things easier to work with early on.

It's not a bad attempt at a character sprite though, and it will take some time to get used to things, just keep playing around with the pixels and colours. Pixel art is a lot harder than it looks but with a little patience, trial and error and a little know how gained from that trial and error, you can get some wonderful things going.

I hope this helps you a little. Sorry for the rather rushed examples, it's 05:00 and I need to get some sleep. Feel free to use the sprite that I've shared in any way, including the one on the far right. I never ended up using it for anything other than a quick placeholder for some old mockup image.

Good Luck with it all, I hope you stick with it!

20
Job offers / Re: [PAID][OPEN] Pixel Art for 2D Game
« on: October 07, 2016, 02:00:20 am »
The last time this person was "hiring" I sent in a sample, they didn't respond for a very long time (6 days) and once they did it was to ask me of rates and for an additional sample, so I followed through which isn't something I typically do, but I was feeling generous and I had some time to kill... I did a rough sample, wasn't liked by the guy (OP) and so I redid that to something a little more fitting.

I was then asked for more samples of my own work (portfolio) which I shared...

I followed up a day or so later with the response of "we're thinking" and I responded in kind to ask if they would let me know once they were done thinking even if they went with another artist. I never heard back from them at all. I have no idea why but I did provide my lowest indie friendly rates which they said were competitive too.

Here are the samples that I created for this person's work, which are better in my opinion, than what they ended up paying for which is the character set sample shared in the OP's post. Anyway, here were my rough samples of sprites  based on the true original ones. Also note that I ended up just using them for something else anyway because I never heard back from the OP:



I just wanted to share my experience. Maybe there was a good reason, maybe not, but just note that this happened, however I have managed to use the work that I did with something else anyway with a few tweaks here and there so it wasn't a complete waste of my time.

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